Residents fled a block of recently-built apartments last night as a "severe fire" took hold of the building.

The blaze, which is under investigation, caused serious damage to a block of 12 apartments at the High Royds development, in High Royds Drive, Menston.

Such was the ferocity of the blaze that fire crews from Rawdon, Idle, Otley, Ilkley, Stanningley, Cookridge, Odsal and Moortown spent two hours bringing the flames under control.

Residents from the block, called Menston House, escaped unhurt and were taken to nearby High Royds Sports and Social Club for the night.

The fire service’s victim support unit and the council’s emergency planning team were called in to help the residents cope with the shock and to find temporary accommodation.

Paul Holdsworth, watch manager at Rawdon fire station, said the roof of the building had sustained severe fire damage, while the flats below had suf-fered major water damage.

He said it could be "some time" before residents were able to return to the flats, which were built about three years ago.

Mr Holdsworth said: "When we arrived there was quite a severe fire in the roof and we didn’t know if the residents had all evacuated, so we had to search the building.

"Most of them were out but one or two were still inside although they were on their way out. Some had been asleep but had been woken up by other residents and the alarm.

"We had to ask for extra resources, including five pumping appliances and two aerial platforms because of the height of the building, which was three storeys.

"We spent a couple of hours getting it under control and contained the fire to the roof area. However, there’s lots of water damage to the flats below but we couldn’t do anything about that because we needed lots of water to put out the fire."

The fire service’s major salvage unit was brought in to extract as much water from the flats as possible in an attempt to limit the damage.

Mr Holdsworth said an investigation into the cause was continuing today, but added that the probe was being hampered by the fact that part of the roof space had collapsed.

The incident happened at 10.35pm last night.